Electronic music pioneer Jamie Teasdale, best known as Kuedo, makes atimely and luminous return with the sci-fi-designed Assertion of a SurroundingPresence, his first solo release proper since 2012, and the second issue on hisfledgling Knives label after J.G. Biberkopf's Ecologies (KNV 001LP, 2015). In2015, a decade on from the groundbreaking sound engineering and designs ofTeasdale's pivotal role in Vex'd, and five years since he emerged solo as Kuedo,his celebrated production style remains anterior to modern dance music andelectronica, largely by virtue of unbending futurist focus and careful attention todetail. Here flanked by collaborations with erstwhile Vex'd partner Roly Porterplus Berlin's Phoebe Kiddo aka Mind: Body: Fitness and Canada'sEgyptrixx, the next chapter in Kuedo's odyssey expands his sci-fi dimensionswith ever-sharper contouring, gradients, and hyper real specialization structuredaround recalibrated footwork, drill, and techno engines. Scaling from the vertigo inducingopener to a finale of panicked gamelan drama, Assertion of aSurrounding Presence renders Kuedo's most affective, elaborate reflection of anowness, divining a metaphysical, cybernetic zeitgeist in the vaulted reverbstructures of his Ghost in the Shell nod "Eyeless Angel Intervention" or the trancefluid T-2000 tekstep momentum of "Boundary Regulation," while pursuing moretangled emotions and ethereal sensations in the recursive, hyaline gamelancadence of "Border State Collapse" and "Event Tracking Across PopulatedTerrain." This follows right thru to the artwork by Melbourne, Australia-basedJoshua Petherwick, who perfectly connotes the album's aesthetic and conceptwith a nod to sci writer Anthony Burgess's fictional conceit of Nadsat - acryptic systemization of order in a dystopian environment - in his abstract yetacutely evocative geometries. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton. Artwork byJoshua Petherwick. RIYL Kenji Kawai, late '90s tech-step, Chicagofootwork, and drill.